Milking of public has got to stop

There has been heated reaction to our story yesterday about the fact that South Africans pay up to 30% more for fuel than our close neighbours, even though their fuel is imported from here. The international markets are to blame for a large chunk of the R15.54 or R15.79 per litre we pay for 93 and 95 octane respectively.

The oil price, which is denominated in US dollars, is on an upward trend, while the rand is going down. So South Africans get burnt twice.

However, what explains the difference between what we and our neighbours pay for fuel – from R10.53 per litre in Botswana, to R11.67 per litre in Swaziland and R11.69 per litre in Namibia – is the slew of taxes, duties and levies which government lumps on to the fuel price.

Those levies include a general fuel levy of R3.37 a litre and the Road Accident Fund (RAF) levy of R1.93 a litre. The two levies bring in a massive total of about R85 billion a year for the government.

It must be acknowledged that it is not unusual for governments around the globe to tax fuel: consumers are a captive market and have no option but to pay if they are to remain mobile in their vehicles.

In many countries in Europe, fuel prices are far higher than we pay.

However, taxpayers and road users are entitled to ask why these levies are so high and what they get in return.

Government has come to see the fuel levies as some sort of inexhaustible piggy bank – very little of which actually gets spent on transport or roads funding. That is why people ended up with e-tolls as a funding mechanism.

The revolt against e-tolls has a simple message at its heart: South Africans are tired of being milked.